


Fool Me Once

by AssortedGeekery



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, IS there an appropriate use of glitter?, Inappropriate use of glitter, Pranking, Teenage Behavior, blood mention, improper use of corn syrup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25641295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssortedGeekery/pseuds/AssortedGeekery
Summary: Someone or something is clearly trying to take a few years of Professor Hojo's life. At some point, he WILL find out who.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46
Collections: FF7 Fanworks Exchange '20





	Fool Me Once

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheMadRabbitsGrin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMadRabbitsGrin/gifts).



> The original prompt for this was: "The unspoken rebellions of Sephiroth against Professor Hojo."
> 
> I actually started an entirely different prompt and I'm not really sure what changed my mind, but I had a mental image here and I just.....went with it. 
> 
> I really hope you enjoy this case study in why I shouldn't write fic while taking 3 graduate classes over the summer.

Once, when Sephiroth was seven or so, he found himself trotting along on a treadmill while Professor Hojo sorted through the mail. The goal was to maintain a constant speed for as long as possible, and this was Sephiroth’s third time running it in a week, presently at a moderately quick pace he would later learn was just a touch faster than the regular army troops were expected to be able to carry a full kit at. He had been at it for an hour already and was thoroughly bored, staring at Hojo’s forehead just above the man’s left eyebrow as he slit open the next envelope in the stack

With a sound like  _ fzzFOONT _ , a cloud of confetti engulfed Hojo, the counter behind him, and a small circle of floor before him.

Sephiroth came to a screeching halt, stumbling on the treadmill and then off of it, staring as Hojo took his glasses off and shook confetti off them. 

“ _ Hm _ . Juvenile,” Hojo remarked. He picked a stray bit of colorful paper off his lip and shook his hair out. Then he turned the envelope over to inspect. “Ah.”

“What was  _ that _ ?” Sephiroth demanded, eyeing the blast radius. 

“A poorly executed attempt at a joke,” How said dryly, dusting rainbow dots off his shoulders. “Some kind of air-powered explosive to force this nonsense from an enclosed space.”

“….. _ why _ ?”

“Apparently some people find this sort of thing amusing. It’s highly unprofessional.”

“Who did it?”

“Someone who will very shortly not be working here anymore. Go shower, we will have to redo this trial tomorrow, since you couldn’t be bothered to  _ stay on the treadmill _ .”

“Yes, Professor,” Sephiroth said dutifully. He went to do as he was told, then sat down with a tablet to look up information on what, exactly, had just happened. 

*-*-*-*-*-*

On the seventeenth of July that year, Professor Kenzo Hojo walked across the main area used for Project S’ ongoing training and headed for the small suite through the back, which contained the child’s bedroom, bathroom, and small living space for eating and studying. At seven years of age, he was perfectly capable of occupying the suite on his own and kept up with the tasks of keeping the whole space clean and orderly. 

Hojo didn’t make it through the door. 

Well, not all of him did, at any rate. His face hit something flat and clear and rebounded while his feet got ahead of him, and he found himself sitting on the lab floor with his coffee mug shattered and his papers scattered. 

Overhead, a thin sheet of plastic wrap had been stretched across the doorway at head-height, sagging slightly now where he had run into it. 

“Professor?” Sephiroth appeared in the doorway that lead to his bedroom, holding half-folded pajamas. “What happened? Are you alright?” He blinked. “Why are you on the floor?”

Hojo looked up at the plastic again, then at Sephiroth. 

“….Professor?”

“Which lab technician was in here?” he demanded. 

“…no one since you left last night, Professor.”

“ _ No one _ ?”

“…I was asleep?” Sephiroth offered. “No one came when I was awake.”

Hojo picked himself up and gathered his scattered papers. “Get a mop,” he sighed. 

Throughout the months of August and September, Hojo found himself on the receiving end of a number of simple physical pranks. Plastic wrap featured heavily. Face-level barriers happened twice more before being replaced with those at knee-height. Once, it was stretched across a sink so tightly that it redirected the spray he turned on directly into his face. There was a week-long lull in which he was certain the prankster had either gotten bored or been caught by someone, and then he attempted to drink from his coffee mug in the middle of the monthly status meeting. His lips and nose met something taut, warm and disturbingly skin-like. 

He might have made an undignified sound of surprise. 

A piece of parafilm had been stretched across the top of his mug, sealing it completely. When had that even  _ happened _ ? Surely he’d drunk from the mug on his way to the meeting? Hadn’t he? 

“Something wrong?” Hollander asked, trying to get a look at the coffee mug.

Hojo delicately peeled the parafilm off the mug and said nothing.

*-*-*-*-*-*

The plastic wrap ceased in October, to Hojo’s relief. Comments had been made about his careful checking of doorways with a waving hand and cautiously prodding toe. Coffee mugs had been sacrificed. Dignity had been- who was he kidding, his dignity hadn’t been seen since Sephiroth’s infant days. Nothing on the planet could rescue dignity from having to carry a small child around on one’s chest to keep it from screaming the building down.

In November, however, he lifted a cup of coffee while reading through a report sent in by a lab manager, and got a mouthful of  _ gravy _ . 

“….professor?” A nearby tech approached cautiously as Hojo coughed. 

“ _ Who made the coffee _ ?”

“I…did? Why? Is something wrong?”

He chucked the mug at the tech, well aware that even a full-body drenching wouldn’t be satisfying, since the gravy was only lukewarm as well as not coffee. Still, the startled yelp went a bit towards making him feel better. 

“ _ Sephiroth _ !” he bellowed. A chair pushed back and small feet hurried over. 

“Professor?”

“You’re old enough to know how to brew a pot of coffee,” Hojo informed him. “Come. I will show you  _ once _ .”

*-*-*-*-*-*

In spite of coffee lessons, Hojo found himself checking his coffee with a spoon throughout the winter. Gravy, beef broth, motor oil, salt, hot sauce, garlic and a variety of other contaminants turned up in his mugs off and on. Once, he had the distinct displeasure of hearing Sephiroth, who had rapidly developed an attraction to the coffee pot which was likely unhealthy, sputtering over a mug of salted coffee. 

Hojo yelled, investigated, fired, hired, and snooped, but the adulteration continued. 

It was some relief, at least, that after the initial spate of coffee incidents, the frequency abated somewhat. Hojo had been bracing himself for a daily, perhaps twice-daily coffee check as he had been expecting after the plastic wrap episodes, and his coffee only had something questionable in it once a week or so. 

Perhaps the prankster was concerned about being caught. Perhaps they had even come close to being caught. Or possibly it was harder to mess with the coffee when Sephiroth was presiding over the pot in his lab, jealously guarding it from almost all comers. Nevermind that his coffee was mostly milk at that age, an effective way to ensure bone strength and acceptable calcium intake now that he fed himself instead of having a bottle stuck in his mouth, the coffee pot was in Sephiroth’s territory now.

*-*-*-*-*-*

Spring came with a blessed lull in the coffee problem, and after a single week in which the plastic wrap bandit returned in full force and Hojo wound up in Medical with a broken wrist, the prankster seemed to vanish. 

*-*-*-*-*-*

He, she or it returned in August, painting the underside of door handles and drawer pulls with a variety of substances that had no business being in those locations. Glue was favored, but Hojo’s personal least favorite was the industrial lubricant used in some of the equipment that processed and contained Mako in the labs. The stuff was thin, almost supernaturally slick, nearly impossible to get off skin, and carried a faint but distinct odor of burnt hair. 

It occurred to him, one October afternoon as he peeled glue off his hand  _ again _ , that this might not be the work of the same person. The glue traps were far more varied, appearing in an assortment of locations all over the labs, effecting a number of lab techs as well as himself, and seemed to have been placed with a great deal more forethought. And none of them had a distinctly strong smell that could give them away…they had to be touched to be found. 

Perhaps a Turk?

*-*-*-*-*-*

It  _ had _ to be a Turk. Four years later, Hojo found himself lying flat on his back on his office floor, covered in streamers, confetti and small, brightly colored balloons with a large HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner draped over his face and fluttering gently in the air-conditioning. The entire mess had been crammed into his desk and cleverly outfitted with some kind of mechanism to send it all up into his face when he opened the drawer. 

None of the lab technicians  _ knew _ when his birthday was. He had explicitly forbidden any research into the matter, and avoided any conversation regarding his birth. Every now and then he heard whispers that Professor Hojo hadn’t been born, he had simply formed from the ether. He knew at least half the executives in the building were unaware as well, and those who did know also knew better than to mention it. Except for Faraman and his pack of barely-tame wild animals……who also had access to nearly every record the company had. 

_ Definitely _ a Turk.

*-*-*-*-*-*

In the fall of 1994, Hojo was pulled from a meeting by a frantic lab tech, who reported that Sephiroth, just returned from his latest rotation through Wutai, had reported in with severe hemorrhage from a wound near his left shoulder. Materia had not healed the wound nor stopped the bleeding.

Hojo arrived in the lab at a run, knowing that Sephiroth favored the left arm when wielding with only one hand and well aware of how severely impacted his performance would be if the arm was weakened, damaged, or- gods forbid- lost. What could he have gotten into, to have broken past his defenses and then inflicted a wound that didn’t  _ heal _ ?

When he arrived, Sephiroth was sitting on an exam table, holding very still. He was a gory mess from his shoulder down his arm and across his chest, gripping the table with his right hand. Several frantic techs had moved aside when the door banged open and Hojo rushed in. 

“What is the extent of the injury?” he demanded.

“We…don’t know?”

“You  _ don’t know _ ? How long has he been in here? Ten minutes? Longer? And you  _ haven’t checked _ ?”

“The Materia didn’t-”

“You are  _ not a mage _ ! Science! Medicine!  _ MORON _ !”

“Professor, I-”

“Shut up. You’re fired. Out. ALL of you, get me a pair of gloves and get out! You’re  _ useless _ !”

Someone handed him gloves. Someone else managed to locate a hefty emergency kit and put it out on the table before the whole pack of techs fled. 

“…..a-afternoon, Professor,” Sephiroth said in a very small voice. 

“You will explain yourself later,” Hojo snapped, pulling the gloves on. He advanced on his greatest creation, hands trembling slightly as he prepared to gauge the damage before cleaning the wound out for a better look. Hopefully, the tech hadn’t been a good caster and the spell had been a dud. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to stitch Sephiroth back together by hand. Hopefully he-

He prodded cautiously at the darkest, wettest part of Sephiroth’s torn shoulder straps. Something dark and warm squirted into his face, dripping into his mouth. For a moment, he held very still, aware of the potential for toxicity in Sephiroth’s blood, before his tastebuds registered.

“……is this  _ chocolate _ ?” he hissed. 

“Corn syrup with cocoa powder and food color,” Sephiroth said breezily. He flexed his bicep, and more ‘blood’ spurted, spattering the floor. “So nice to see you again, Professor.”

“Would I be correct in assuming that there is no injury whatsoever?” he demanded, stalking over to a cabinet. 

“There was a little chafing, but the Materia took care of that,” Sephiroth hummed, reaching into his shirt and extracting what appeared to be a much-abused IV bag from his armpit. 

“And this  _ childish _ display served  _ what  _ purpose, exactly?”

“Stress testing,” Sephiroth said lightly. “This batch of techs doesn’t function very well under pressure, do they?”

“ _ Excuse me _ ? You have no business-” He jerked open the cabinet door. 

**_fzzFOONT_ **

Sephiroth stuck his tongue out and attempted to pick glitter off of it. “ _ Hm _ . Still haven’t gotten that taken care of?”

Hojo made a boiling kettle sort of sound and stalked out of the room entirely, trailing pink and purple sparkles in his wake. 

*-*-*-*-*-*

Around mid-winter, Hojo was fairly certain he had had quite enough glitter to last him a lifetime. Every time he thought there couldn’t possibly be another glitter bomb, he was proved wrong. Most notably when he settled into his chair in a Directors meeting and set off one that had been rigged to the damned thing, sending a colossal fountain of tiny, rainbow-colored phallus glitters in all directions and effectively  _ ending _ the meeting before it had begun. Director Faraman examined the mechanism on Hojo’s chair and murmured something that sounded like ‘impressive’ before promising the President he would have someone look into the incident with a very straight face. 

Damn those Turks. 

*-*-*-*-*-*

Over the course of the next four years, Hojo found himself plagued with the occasional prank. He had initially begun to suspect it was Sephiroth himself, but he scrapped that idea upon consulting a calendar and noting that more than thirty percent of the incidents occurred while Sephiroth was in the field. Brilliant his creation might have been, but he wasn’t capable of being in two places at once, nor did he have the ability to teleport to and from a separate continent. So. Turks. It had to be Turks. 

And it was probably a Turk who had taught Sephiroth the occasional trick he played openly when he was back in Midgar for routine evaluation and recuperation, usually juvenile body horror that he continued to refer to as ‘stress testing’. 

Hojo was loathe to admit it, but it came in handy the  _ one _ time Sephiroth was airlifted back to base from an extermination assignment with his back in tatters, coat and armor and skin torn to bleeding rags. Those lab technicians who had been through a prank or two hurried into action while he was still on his way down to them, and they had Sephiroth’s wounds cleaned, documented, and were prepping him for a Heal spell by the time Hojo arrived. 

One tech, a woman who had managed not to get fired through five years of Sephiroth, approached as Hojo entered. 

“It’s not syrup, sir,” she reported. And she ought to know- there was a smeared handprint of blood on her face, crossing her mouth. “And his levels are low, I experienced no burning or tingling sensation upon skin contact, and only sight burning on the tongue.”

“Go wash that  _ off _ ,” Hojo snapped, but inside he was rather pleased that  _ someone _ had been doing their job.

Several hours later, post-Healing, Hojo returned to the room Sephiroth had been put in to check his Mako levels properly and give him an earful about letting monsters sneak up behind him. Sephiroth lay on his side, looking sleepy but reading a report on his PHS, feet kicking a bit. 

“That was foolish,” Hojo pointed out, stalking across the room to yank open a cabinet and get a testing kit out. “Letting it get at your back.”

“There were three others at my front, what do you expect?” Sephiroth demanded. “Turn my back on  _ them _ so I could deal with the one behind me? Oh yes, that would go over  _ so _ well.”

“I remember when you listened to me,” Hojo grumbled, opening the kit. 

_ Byoiinngg _

If anyone ever suggested that he had leaped backward with a squeak when a spring-loaded cockroach shot at his face, he would staunchly deny it. He kicked the wretched thing under Sephiroth’s table.

“Professor?” Sephiroth looked up at him. “What was that?”

“ _ Nothing _ . Arm. I need a vein.”

Sephiroth extended an arm. Hojo slapped the syringe into his free hand and went back to test prep, holding a hand out for Sephiroth to return it once he was done. 

“No bandage?”

“You are not a child.”

“I just had a healing, my own healing factor will be sluggish for a few hours.”

“Hold a gauze pad on it and stop whining.” He began portioning out drops of blood into vials, ending on a small monitor that tested for abnormalities. It whirred to life while he packed and labeled everything else, and beeped when it had finished. 

Hojo opened his PHS to check the readings, scrolling through normal, normal, nor-

“Sephiroth.”

“Mmmm?”

He rummaged in another cabinet, then handed Sephiroth a sample cup. “Now.”

“.....excuse me?”

“Now.”

“No.”

“ _ Now _ .”

“You just had people hosing my blood off a lab table and out of a helicopter, what makes you think I’m hydrated enough to piss in a cup?”

“Do not make me call a nurse with a catheter.”

“Give me something to drink and a little time, I’ll see what I can do.”

Given an adequate amount of rehydration and some time, Sephiroth did indeed produce the sample, curling back onto his exam table with his PHS while Hojo addressed the testing at hand. Dipsticks and a small chemical sampler at the ready, he unscrewed the lid. 

**_FOONT_ **

A fountain of yellow and gold glitters exploded in his face.

Sephiroth fell off the table laughing. 

Gasping in shock and outrage, Hojo turned on what had once been his most glorious creation and was now a juvenile nitwit rolling on the floor and  _ howling  _ with laughter. 

“ _ You _ .”

“You thought I was  _ pregnant _ !” Sephiroth wheezed, pounding on the tiles with a fist. “ _ PREGNANT _ !”

“All. This. Time.”

“ _ Years _ !” the greatest waste of research funding on the face of the Planet crowed. 

“It was  _ you _ .”

Sephiroth only cackled, thrashing around on the floor in fits of hysterical laughter. 

Professor Kenzo Hojo left the pregnancy testing kit out on the counter, turned, and stalked out of the room with all the dignity he could muster, shedding golden sparkles as he went. In the hall outside, Director Faraman leaned on the wall, waiting for a report to carry to the President. To his credit, only one corner of his mouth quirked up. 

“You’ve got a little something, Professor,” he murmured. “On your face.”

“Not. A. Word.”

“The General’s condition is stable?”

“The  _ General _ is  _ fine _ .”

“And that sound in there is-”

“How might one go about procuring a blood sample from a pregnant woman, Faraman?” Hojo asked abruptly. “Without said pregnant woman on hand?”

Only then did the little quirked corner of Veld’s mouth become a full, smug smile. 

“Why…...you ask a Turk, of course.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this utterly ridiculous little romp with me!


End file.
